Also, that entire movie can be adequately consumed by watching that YouTube link and then reading the spoiler for the ending.

To be fair, I thought the ending was very well done. Were it online, I'd say watch the trailer and then ending, because it covers pretty much all of it.

That said: delivering anthrax meds by postal workers won't work.

Can you reveal why you'd watch a movie like that? Did someone tell you they'd share the location of a ticking bomb if you sat through that whole film? Surely it was something like that, right?

I was home sick all weekend and it was the only thing I hadn't seen on the free On-Demand that sounded interesting.

Bonus: my cough sounded just like the chick's cough who had been exposed to the toxin. So that was encouraging.

Your explanation is just short of my ticking-bomb scenario in exculpatory value. Anyway, I figured there had to be a good reason.

And anyway it wasn't bad, just overlong. It was an excellent 30 minute Twilight Zone episode trapped in a 90 minute movie.

Trying to fill the clown-pants of a 90 minute movie.

||

Hey, my cognitive linguistics textbook just referenced dasein!

I thought unfogged should know.

|>

The best part of Haugeland's paper "Pattern and Being" is the very end, where out of nowhere he drops some Dasein action on the unsuspecting reader.

This book even used "always already"! Thanks, unfogged, for making me a prepared student!

Total threadjack. And this one was destined for 1,000 comments before you clowns showed up. Fucking patriarchy is keeping Becks down.

Clown pants! Back to the clown pants! Clown pants filled with CFCs help America breathe!

Ari you're so demanding.

Hey ari, I heard your cob logger on the ray-dee-o a couple of times this morning. Some kind of real smart fella, the announcers said.

Also, I just went to a Paci/fica Quar/tet concert (Googleproofing because I have to review it), and while I have always supported the right of women to wear whatever the hell they want on stage, I have to say that the low-cut sleeveless dress of the first violinist made for some distraction, especially during the Allegro appassionata of the Beethoven Op. 132.

Rauchway's a dick. Or haven't you heard? Either way, pass it on.

Seriously, worse than being a dick, they identified him as an economist. An economist?!? Oh, the shame of it.

Considering that the treatment of choice for anthrax may still be penicillin, the Times article seems about right. It would cost a bunch of money to have a month's worth of penicillin available for much of the population, but it's not like the government doesn't blow lots of money on other things. (The same methods used to find people could be used as the census uses.)

I'll repeat my standard anthrax speculation in summary form in case someone here actually knows better.

1. As of 9/10/01, the treatment of choice for anthrax was penicillin, not Cipro. Shortly after 9/11, the word "cipro" was leaked to key media people, possible by John Schmitz. The price spiked and Bayer got a windfall.

1a. It's possible that because of government secrecy, Mandell and the authors of Current Diagnosis and Treatment were not up to date on anthrax treatment. This is an alternative to the idea that it was all PR. Cipro still is a alternative treatment, not the primary treatment, and is especially advised for those allergic to penicillin.

2. Anthrax is easily treatable and not especially easy to disperse, so it's hard to figure why it's been chosen for germ warfare. (I have asked whether anthrax is might not be a government boondoggle locked into the budgets which should be sunsetted.) Anthrax's reputation for being incurable was the result of the fact that when it was a very rare disease it was not diagnosed in the early stages before it became almost incurable. In 2001 the survival rate for inhalation anthrax was far higher than the historical norm.

2a. One advantage of anthrax does have is that its spores are almost indestructible. Furthermore, they activate in your body in sort of a time-release way, so a full month of daily treatment is required.

2b. So anthrax seems mostly usable as a terror weapon against civilian populations rather than as a battlefield weapon or for use against troops. It would probably be effective in a surprise attack inducing an immediate panic when the first cases were diagnosed and before treatment was given.

2c. I'm pretty sure that the high mortality in the Soviet anthrax accident was the result of secrecy. The Zimbabwe epidemic, probably the result of South African germ warfare, 10,000 cases led to only 200 deaths even though medical care was very poor.

3. In short, defense against anthrax seems pretty feasible. Budgeting and inertia are probably the reasons why nothing much has been done. How much money should you spend protecting against an attack that has a .0001% of happening when the size of the attack is unknown: 100,000 people? 10 million? Anthrax protection spending is not sexy and competes for funding, and loses, with fun toys for The Troops (in the sense of The Generals). On the other hand, having lots of penicillin around is a good thing.

Isn't this local neighborhood door-to-door approach what they do in Cuba? Because I'm not taking any Commie medicine!

delivering anthrax meds by postal workers won't work.

Not with that defeatist attitude, it won't.

I hope the movie doesn't say, as the link in 1 does, that the bacteria found a breeding ground and became a virus.

19: I hope the movie doesn't say, as the link in 1 does, that the bacteria found a breeding ground and became a virus.

Yes it does, combining biological energy with a form of fusion. Which is totally possible. In a movie.

But I really wanted to brag that I made $2000 USD off of anthrax. And y'all paid for it. Bwahahahahaha. Cough.

John,

On the other hand, having lots of penicillin around is a good thing.

John you big sweet talker you! You forgot the "Laydeez!"